When news of the European Commission’s stance on the merger leaked over the past two weeks or so, some observers wondered whether Oracle would use the potential rejection to walk away from the deal.

Oracle essentially squashed those thoughts by releasing a statement today that slams the European Commission for “a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics.”

“It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source,” Oracle says in the statement. “The database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players, including IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and three distinct open source vendors. Oracle and MySQL are very different database products. There is no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products. Mergers like this occur regularly and have not been prohibited by United States or European regulators in decades.”